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The players don’t exactly welcome us into their ranks. They’ve turned the game on its head and were hungry to push on and win. We’ve thrown their plans into disarray, robbing them of two of their birds.
“What’s this about?” one of the blockers grunts, glaring at us.
“Mary and Archibald are my friends,” Cal says quietly. “Killers are in the crowd, hunting for them.”
“How’s that my problem?” the blocker grumbles, but backs down when the others turn on him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean that. I’m just angry because I wanted to win.”
“I still think we can,” Cal says. “In fact, it’s important to look like this is a piece of chicanery. Everyone knows our birds weren’t injured. They’ll think we faked it to replace them with better players. We have to make it look like that’s the case, and if we pull it off, we can make it work in our favour.”
Cal quickly explains his strategy. We’re going to bring on extra players and play in a way that makes it seem as if they’re trying to manoeuvre Inez and me into shooting positions. He’ll assign a blocker to each of us, and they’ll tell us where and when to run, making it look as if we know what we’re doing.
“At the same time,” Cal says, “we’ll secretly try to find Jonah, our real bird. If he can score a few points, it will look like it was a ruse and they’ll stop marking Mary and Archibald, at which point we can pick them out. If one of them scores, it will look like a double ruse. The SubMerged will start marking them again, at which point we’ll get the grop to Jonah and...” He twirls his finger round.
“Alright,” the captain shrugs. “You hauled us back into the game, so we’ll follow your lead. I’ll fetch the others.”
While the captain is summoning his troops, Cal asks one of the blockers – a sturdy woman – to team with Inez, then asks the gruff blocker who was complaining about us to watch over me.
“You’d better not be as useless as you look,” the blocker growls.
“It’s worse than you think,” I wince. “I hadn’t even seen a game of grop before today.”
The blocker groans, then laughs. “At least you’re honest. My name’s Frank.”
“Archie.”
“I thought it was Archibald.”
“Archie will do.”
“Alright, Archie, do you know the first rule of grop?”
“No,” I tell him, expecting a withering glance.
Instead Frank smiles and says, “Try not to get killed.” As I blanch, he gives my shoulder a squeeze. “Run the way I indicate when I tap on your left or right shoulder, kick or punch anyone who gets in your way, and show no fear.”
“Ok,” I wheeze.
“You’ll be fine,” he says unconvincingly. “If you end up with the grop, pass it quickly, or take a shot if a chucker scoops you up and points you at a tree.”
Before Frank can offer any more advice, the gropmeister whistles and the SubMerged captain hurls the grop into the air.
“GROP!” the crowd roars, and it sounds a lot louder and more bone-juddering out here than it did on the sidelines.
Then the SubMerged players are barrelling towards us like a herd of bulls and, although it must surely only be my imagination, I feel like every single one of them is making a beeline for me.